On Saturday 11 November 2006 22:17, Randall R Schulz wrote:
> . . . software _is not_ text. It is mechanism. It is logic. It is
> ideas. Text is only the way it is externalized from its point of
> conception in a human mind (or, in some cases, from another program).
No...
Software is *only* text. Software is not an idea, a mechanism, or logic.
Software text is *the way* (means by which) logic, ideas, and intended
human conception is transferred to a *patentable* mechanism.
What may be patented (in my view) is the mechanism... which includes the
microprocessor hardware and its associated binary instruction set. What may
not be patented (in my view) is the software text which is used to convey
human conception to an interpreter (or compiler) for the express purpose of
generating processor instructions to manipulate the patentable processor
hardware. The software text is *never* executed... it is always read
(obliterated in the transfer) and translated for the mechanism. The mechanism
*never sees* the software text... because it is, text not machine
instructions.
This is analogous to the script produced by a playwrite. The script is
not the mechanism, the emotion, the dance, the music.... it must be
interpretted by the dancers, the actors, the musicians in order to come alive
in mechanism and emotion. Plays are protected by copyright. So it is with
computer software text. Software text must be translated (compiled or
interpretted in some way) in order to come alive in logic, mechanism, and
useful function. Software text may be protected (in my view) by copyright, or
better yet by copyleft.
Consider the following software text:
for (i=0; i<=9; i++) {
;
}
I intend this text to be translated into machine instructions by a
compiler or interpretter--- instructions which may or may not eventually be
executed on a real processor chip. These three lines of software text convey
the idea (human conception) of looping through a nop instruction ten times
essentially doing nothing except progressing through a loop counter. These
three lines of software text are twenty(20) symbols arranged for human
capacity by the use of white space and will *never* see the registers of a
patentable mechanism. These lines are not logic, not mechanism, not
executable, and are not patentable (in my view). These three lines are *only*
text.
I have written software text for over twenty years... most of it for
commercial application (though some for my own hobby interest). All of it
(except the machine code I produced for my Vic20) was produced through a text
editor, and some of it was produced through a word processor... like plays,
and recipes, and instructions for building a balsa wood glider. Patents are
not appropriate for text of any kind... including software.
--
Kind regards,
M Harris <><
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